


A Few Moments More

by acf151



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drunkenness, Explosions, Past Sexual Abuse, Psychometry, Scum and Villany, Shooting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21724729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acf151/pseuds/acf151
Summary: Cal Kestis escapes Bracca before the Second Sister arrives.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

In another life, Cal Kestis would have had less time. There would be an Inquisitor Squad lingering in the Bracco system, able to respond quickly when they felt someone connect to the Force nearby. In that other life, he lost Prauf right in front of his eyes, and was goaded into running for his life and on to a quest he would not have otherwise chosen.

But in this life, Cal made it back to his bunk that day he saved Prauf. He was able to collect a bag of the few belongings he had scraped together over the years. He was able to get passage on a supply ship that night, working across the stars to Nar Shaddaa. 

Once there, Cal Kestis, one time Jedi Padawan apprentice to Jaro Tapal, set about reinventing himself, again. Starting with finding a way to support himself. He had a connection – a scrapper named Tabbers had owed him a favor, and that was where he started. Sadly, the Force was done lying quietly. 

There was even less mercy on Nar Shaddaa than there had been on Bracca - and far more predators.  



	2. Approved Trash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cal realizes that his life on Nar Shaddaa will be much more dangerous than as a Rigger on Bracca and takes steps to mitigate the damage.

A favor from Tabbers meant a job – scrapping, of course. But it paid for a bunk, secure storage, a foldout worktable, food, and mechanical parts he couldn’t scrounge for. But unlike scrapping as a rigger on Bracca, Cal was not reclaiming quality metals from starship hulls and interior scaffolding – things usually touched by builder droids, with no attendant emotions. He was not rigging precision explosives to separate just enough metal for the smelters to remold. He was scrapping the normal detritus of a major metropolitan moon, sifting through the garbage of millions of beings, and his psychometry, along with the rest of his Force abilities, was gaining in strength. 

Mercifully, Cal’d been able to keep the thick gloves he’d used on the supply ship, or otherwise, his first three weeks on the job would have flattened him. 

The second day, his forearm had brushed a cracked cargo crate in the burnt-out hulk of a hovertruck. Two minutes later, when he woke up from impressions of the flames and screaming, Cal had found that he had fallen on a particularly jagged piece of metal, and ripped another tear in his arm. He had to come up with some kind of solution that let him scan the materials before touching them, and minimize his exposure as much as possible. 

One of his finds had been an old BD explorer droid chassis with a control board and memory circuit that seemed intact, which he purchased for salvage from Tabbers. After work hours, he’d been tweaking the gears and servos to withstand heavy lifting and propulsion, and getting the scanning focus to be as precise as possible. With a link to the commodities market, as well as the moon’s vehicle registration systems this little droid would be able to tell Cal just how much the materials would get him on the daily market, and if the vehicles had been reported in any sort of accident, he needed to be aware of. If this worked, and started to pay off, he’d think about upgrades like slicing and other less typical mods.

“Okay.” He said with a sigh. “Here goes nothing.” He re-sealed the carbon scored casing keeping the interior of the droid safe from everything from mud to vacuum, and remote activated the start-up sequence. 

The cyan colored lights on the back of the BD head started flashing on and off first. Then the antennae to either side began to flicker and twist back and forth. With a slight chitter, the droid’s scomp link telescoped open and shut. Then the spotlight turned on and off. A slight catching sound started as droid turned it’s head, first right, then left. Cal would have to make sure it was oiled properly and keep an eye on it. Then the head tilted up at him, in an inquiring gesture. Unfortunately, the spotlight beam hit him square in the eye.

Cal quickly raised a hand to block the beam. “Hello. I’m Cal Kestis.” The droid seemed to consider this a moment. Then a stream of binary in beeps and twitters came back at him, peppering him with questions. For the first time in a long time, Cal laughed. “Well, BD-2, it’s nice to meet you too. Do you think you can help me find treasures to trade?” 

After several hours of tweaks and questions, BD-2 was ready for tomorrow’s field test. Putting BD-2 on his bunk he folded away his workstation and finished getting ready for bed. BD-2 settled into the shelf next to him, scanning the holonet for news records of the salvage site, what was most highly in demand, and most importantly to him, who this ‘Cal Kestis’ person was, and how best he could help him stay grounded and in one piece. 

Next to him, Cal fell asleep. After a few hours, BD-2’s sensors jarred him from the low power charge mode he settled into as he researched as much as he could access before he talked Cal into taking him to a library terminal. No one had entered the closet Cal had managed to secure for them, which was scarcely wider than the bunk and fresher unit. 

Leaving the bunk to search around the room, BD-2 could only find movement from his master. His hands were clenching and unclenching. Returning to the storage alcove, BD-2 noticed that Cal’s eyes were moving rapidly, though they were still shut. He was still flat on his back, not tossing and turning, but it was clear he was no longer having a restful sleep. BD-2 searched his earliest routines for guidance on what caused sleep disorders in humans. Nothing immediately helpful yet, though human biology likely hadn’t changed much since his initial activation. He would have to add medical routines to his list of datasets he needed to retrieve.

His new master was going to be quite a puzzle for him to keep steady. After so long dormant, he relished the challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: According to the designers of BD-1 (see below link), the BD units are rare explorer droids that were designed to help their explorers conduct their research, scan materials and not get lonely or depressed/detached from society. Just because Cal isn’t going to be meeting BD-1 (not yet at least), I wasn’t about to turn him lose without a minder and as close to our favorite droid as I could get. Cal’s life in this series isn’t going to be any easier because the Inquisitorial squad isn’t hounding him right now. He’s smack in the middle of Hutt space. It’s safe for no one.  
https://www.gameinformer.com/exclusive/2019/06/15/exclusive-in-depth-profile-on-star-wars-jedi-fallen-orders-new-droid-bd-1


	3. Chapter 3

Cal apparently liked loud, deep music. Something with string vibrations and some dark echoing sound; it had a base rhythm to it that seemed to calm his master down and let him focus on his job. After several near scrapes with voids and falling debris that Cal seemed perfectly unconcerned by, BD-2 was able to hack into his hearing protection/headset, so he could bleet a warning at him if needed. 

Really, for someone who kept his head down and away from as many other people as possible, he was quite unconcerned with his own safety.

They had been working together for two months now, and Cal seemed to have settled into a good pattern. BD stayed on his back most of the time, and had figured out the timing needed for scanning the debris ahead of when Cal went to pick it up, referencing the databases, and letting him know if there were any accidents or fires connected with the serial numbers or in the chemical signatures embedded in the surface. On some occasions, before picking up the objects, Cal layered a second heavy pair of gauntlets that covered his entire forearm and jacket before moving to the piece and attaching magnetic tow cables or small explosives to loosen it from its resting place. Together they moved slowly and deliberately through the piles, and were noticeably pulling out most of the more valuable plastimers, metals and ores. 

Tabbers, the head of the company with the scrap contract for this section of Nar Shaddaa was very pleased with his work, and not shy about it. Scrappers on Nar Shaddaa got a small finder’s percentage, in place of hazard duty pay. This, combined with the effusive praise meant that Cal’s fellow scrappers were less pleased with him, even though he was clearly not living a wealthy life, and staying as much to himself as possible.

BD-2 could hear the grumbling and observed the darkening looks his master was getting, and could recognize it as a bad sign. But it wasn’t clear what he should do about it yet, if anything. 

***

After four months, the accidents started. Jostles and shoves turned to missing lunches and spilled drinks. That at least got through to Cal, who then started standing rounds for his coworkers at the cantina after their shifts. He even started helping those who were catching on to how useful BD-2 could be to retrofit and program their own droid assistants, though none had the accident routines BD-2 had. This raised the efficiency of his coworkers as well. While he formed no close friends, as he’d had with Prauf, most of his shift began to tolerate his presence. Unfortunately, by that point it wasn’t enough for everyone, and unwitting, he had enemies.

Nar Shaddaa was a very dangerous place to have enemies. There was so many opportunities for revenge.

One of the reasons Cal was so insular now, as opposed to when he was on Bracca, was that his psychometry in particular was acting up. Since saving Prauf, his reflexes and muscle control were improving all the time, and he thought he might be able to manage a bit of telekinesis if he practiced. He was not going to practice. That didn’t stop him from waking from nightmares to hear the tools rattling in the fold away workbench, and the credchips and other pocket debris levitating ever so slightly off the shelf. BD-2 was too heavy to be moved yet, so it couldn’t be too serious, surely. Surely it wasn’t going to be enough to attract attention with millions of other beings to hide among. 

It was the psychometry that was worrying him, though. Maybe it was sifting through burned hulks from accidents, but what had before been a preventable, controllable phenomenon, was increasingly out of his control. Not just in intensity and duration, though that too, but in when it chose to activate and when it didn’t. When he had been in training under Master Tapal, it had just been his hands, and he could usually prevent it from activating. But then, he’d been in meditation for at least three hours a day and in constant contact with the Force. Now it could activate from anywhere on his arms below the elbow, and sometimes he could still get vague impressions even through two sets of gloves, gauntlets and jacket. Which made him even more fumble fingered and clumsy, despite his reflexes, and miserably hot besides.

In privacy, he started doing as much of his old katas as he could in the narrow aisle of his bunk and meditated before sleeping without actually opening himself up fully to the Force. It helped, really, it did. He told himself so. 

His days were filled with broken metal, burnt ships, grey rain and dark alleys. To avoid attracting attention, he wore the same dull, scratchy safety jumpsuit with orange safety reflective patches as the rest of his coworkers. He couldn’t be farther from the Temple or the Room of a Thousand Fountains if he tried. 

It was BD-2, with his mandatory weekly data archive trips, running commentary, jokes and advice, who was his brightest spot of hope. After the archive trips, the little droid would have new images or sounds to play him, and slowly, Cal seemed to adjust. Not well, but better. Ironically, it was BD-2 who would get him caught. 

***

Each week, the crew got 48 mandatory hours off. Not thanks to a union or anything, but it was part of the protection scheme Tabbers had set up with the local syndicates and swoop gangs. 48 hours off meant a lot of drinking and carousing that otherwise would not get their paychecks into the local underworld. In return, the criminal element left Tabbers’ operation run with minimal interference. 

It wasn’t the first round of drinking and carousing that put Cal in danger of a sensory overload. It was the third and finally the fourth. 

That was when some of the guys on his shift, who had convinced him to take off his gloves, pushed one of the women, a solid older Rutian twi'lek with welding scars running up her arms, into his lap. At first it seemed ok. He vaguely recognized her from another shift – her name was Diaan. They were both drunk enough that she thought he made a good cushion, bony as he was, and he was frankly too out of it to care. And the only impressions he was getting off of her were the sparks of transparisteel and bronzium. Then, as they both got more and more inebriated, one of her lekk twined around his wrist, relatively harmless petting for a twi'lek. 

To Diaan, and the rest of the cantina, it just looked like he’d hit his limit at four drinks and collapsed into a stupor. Cal was getting a very graphic sensory introduction to all the times she’d had her lekk pulled, twisted, stroked or petted, frequently against her will or in passing. Which was a lot, and since it involved sensory organs he didn’t biologically have, to say he was disoriented was an understatement. 

Coming out of it, he was left shaken, his face fading to an ashen color. Though he carefully disengaged her lekk with a smile, and put his gloves back on as surreptitiously as he could, Diaan noticed. And so did a few of his coworkers, and a new thread of story was added to the rumor mill about him. 

After that, whenever he was at the cantina, he stopped at two drinks. While he could be coaxed out of his gloves eventually, as long as he kept a glass in hand, he kept long sleeves rolled firmly down. Diaan, kept sitting with him though, she made sure not to touch him. She started asking about BD-2, and slowly, they started forming a casual friendship. They plotted mods for BD-2 and what she was planning to upgrade her speeder bike with. They talked about work topics like explosive charge packs and welding techniques. Nothing astounding, or deep, but friendly, and welcome. 

The day of the swoop attack, the quiet, bland, little life of hard work he had built for himself fell to pieces again. Not all at once, but that was the catalyst. 

He didn’t know how the fight got started or where the swoops came from. One minute, he and BD-2 were hooking up salvage from a landspeeder, and the next, explosions were detonating from two directions, and a lightfight was in progress. 

They were all scrappers, and used to rough living, and rough working, so there was none of the panicked screaming that another crowd would have had. The screaming was from the ten or so people that had been shot and another section of the crew had a lot of debris raining down on them. Diaan ended up stuck under a girder that had fallen, but not shot, and Cal and BD-2 moved to help her first. 

BD-2 kept screaming at him to duck or dodge or wait, but Cal instinctively tuned him out and leaned into the Force, focusing on Diaan. He had enough presence of mind not to actually try touching her. But he was able to lever off the girder to one side and free her leg. Once he knew she was safe, only then did he start thinking about the others. 

Diaan was going to be fine. Her foot was broken, and she was scared and angry, but she was going to be fine. 

Two of the men that had been standing next where Cal had been, in a curiously clear patch of blast area, were dead. One had clearly taken a bolt to the head and died instantly, and no one could realistically blame him for leaving him. But the other had bled out thanks to shrapnel, and Cal could have saved him, if he had kept his head down and listened to BD-2. And of course, if he had been able to touch the man deftly enough to apply a tourniquet. 

So, in the aftermath of the fight, the comments started to get a little bit darker.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work in progress. Chapters will be posted when available.  
Since there is a lightfight (shooting) in the third chapter, though it's not explicit, I've moved the rating up to teen.


End file.
